


Fooled

by the__magpie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: April Fools Prank, April Fools' Day, College AU, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friends to Lovers, M/M, some language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 07:21:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6508339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the__magpie/pseuds/the__magpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Cas pretend to be dating as an April fool's prank, but they don't exactly get the reaction they expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fooled

**Author's Note:**

> listen, I know it’s over a week after April Fool’s Day but I got this idea in my head so I wrote it anyway ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Dean caught Cas’ eye from across the room and smirked. Sam and Charlie, sitting at the cafeteria table with Cas, would have no idea what hit them. He ran over what they had planned in his head, then strode toward their table.

“Hey babe.” He planted a kiss on Cas’ cheek before dropping into the seat next to him. Charlie and Sam’s heads whipped up, looking between the two of them with expressions so comical that Dean had to press his lips together to keep from laughing.

“ _What_ did you just call him?” Charlie demanded, her eyes narrowing.

“Oh,” Cas said, pretending to look abashed. “I suppose now is a good time as any to tell you.” He laid his hand over Dean’s on the table. “Dean and I have been secretly dating for the last month.”

Charlie and Sam were stunned into silence. Then Sam made a sound that was something of a snort and Charlie’s face spread into a huge, delighted grin.

“I _knew_ it!” she exclaimed.

“I – what?” Dean said. That was not the reaction he had expected.

“I knew that those meaningful gazes and lingering touches meant something! At first I thought it was just a fuckton of unresolved sexual tension, but I _knew_ it had to be something more!”

Dean felt his face grow hot. “Uh, Charlie—”

Sam clapped Dean on the shoulder. “Congrats, you two, I’m really happy for you. Especially that you finally got the courage to tell us about it.”

Dean moved his hand away from Cas’ to cover his face. “Oh my god, you guys, we were kidding.”

Sam frowned. “What?”

“April fool’s?” Cas said weakly.

Nobody spoke. Dean didn’t dare look in Cas’ direction.

“Oh, shit,” Charlie muttered. Dean turned his head to glare at her and she quickly amended. “I mean, _duh!_ We were totally playing along. Right, Sam? Right?” She nudged him forcefully with her elbow.

“Uh, of course. We really got you back, huh?”

“You guys are no fun.” Dean pushed himself up from his chair. “Come on, Cas, we were gonna get Gabe next, right?”

“Yes.” Cas’ face was scrunched into a frown, but he stood up to follow Dean.

“Well, see you guys around,” Charlie said, overly casual.

“That was weird,” Dean muttered as they walked out of the cafeteria.

“Not quite the reaction we were going for,” Cas agreed.

It’d been Dean’s idea, but Cas had quickly gotten on board when Dean told him about it the night before. They had been roommates for the past three years and everyone knew that they were best friends, and yeah, sometimes people joked that they were dating. But this year they decided to joke them right back.

They knew from asking around that Gabriel was in the science building, setting up a major prank for the biology class later; this was his favorite day of the year after all. Once there, they snooped around until they spotted him loitering outside one of the classrooms. Cas grabbed Dean’s hand and, pretending not to notice Gabriel, they started to walk past him.

After a moment, they heard, “Woah, woah, woah!” They stopped and feigned surprise at seeing Gabriel. He gestured at their clasped hands. “What’s going on here?”

“What does it look like?” Dean wrapped an arm around Cas’ waist. “I’m dating your little brother, Gabe. Deal with it.”

Gabriel clasped his hands together and grinned almost maniacally. “It’s about time!”

“Gabriel,” Cas said reproachfully.

“No, no, I mean it! You two have been dancing on the edge of this for years. I’m just disappointed I can’t take credit for finally getting you two together. Ooh, ooh! Have you taken his virginity yet, Deano?”

“Gabriel!” Cas exclaimed again, sounding genuinely upset.

“Lucky that you two share a room, isn’t it? No need to worry about snooping roommates walking in during sexytimes.”

“That’s enough,” Dean snapped, seeing that Cas’ face was burning with humiliation. “It’s an April fool’s prank, asshole.”

Gabriel’s mouth fell open and Dean felt a moment of satisfaction at having out-pranked the prankster. Then Gabriel’s face grew stormy. He marched forward and stabbed his finger in Dean’s chest.

“What do you think you’re doing, playing with my little brother’s feelings with that? How dare you defile his honor?”

“D-defile?” Dean sputtered, taking a step backward.

“Gabriel, stop,” Cas said, placing a hand on his brother’s arm. “He wasn’t defiling anything. We planned it together, okay?”

“Oh.” Gabriel stopped glaring at Dean and stepped down. “Well, if you’re sure, Cas.” He shrugged. “I have to admit, you fooled me. Now excuse me, I have to get back to creating the greatest prank of the century.”

“What is it?” Dean asked.

“I’m sure you’ll find out later, Deano,” Gabriel winked. “Take good care of my brother!”

Dean flipped him off as they walked away.

“Your brother really gets on my nerves sometimes,” he grumbled to Cas.

“He can be difficult sometimes. All that stuff about us sleeping together…” Cas huffed out a breath. “Complete nonsense. Totally out of line.”

“I know, right? As if we’d ever, um…” Dean cleared his throat. “Yeah. It’s ridiculous.”

“Should we try to find Kevin next?”

Unfortunately, Kevin’s reaction was not much more satisfying. When they found him in the library and sat down at the table across from him, he didn’t even notice that they were blatantly holding hands on top of the table for a few minutes. At last, his mind seemed to come out of the fog of whatever religious studies text he was reading for long enough to say, “Oh good, you’re finally…that.”

“Yeah,” Dean muttered. “Except not. April fool’s.”

“Oh.” Kevin frowned, then looked back down at the book in front of him and proceeded to forget that they were there. Dean rolled his eyes and stood up, Cas just behind him.

“He’s just distracted,” Cas said once they were outside the library. “You know he’s been studying like crazy for that exam next week. He probably doesn’t even know what he’s saying.”

“Yeah, that’s probably it.”

Their plan from there was to just walk around campus holding hands and see who noticed. Dean was getting more and more frustrated with the prank because nobody seemed to be reacting the way he hoped. A number of people that they passed just laughed, some congratulated them – including some people that Dean had never met before – and someone came up to them to say that they were “goals,” whatever that was supposed to mean.

Then a girl with dark hair wearing a grey sweater hurried up to them, beaming. “Castiel, I’m so happy for you! I told you if you want something you should go out and get it!”

“Hannah!” Cas said sharply at the same time that Dean said, “April fool’s!”

“Oh.” Hannah looked at their clasped hands and her face turned pink. “I’m sorry, I just assumed—”

“Yeah, that was kinda the point,” Dean sighed.

“It’s alright, Hannah,” Cas said. “You’re not the first person to think that.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again. She placed a hand on Cas’ arm briefly before walking off.

“What was that all about?” Dean asked, glancing after her. “She have a crush on you or something?”

“No.” Cas squinted down at his shoes and scuffed the ground. “She’s my…second cousin, I think. Possibly third.”

“Your family is too damn big, Cas. I can’t keep track of them.” Looking around, he spotted a head of blonde curls up ahead. “Look, there’s Jess, let’s see what she says!”

He tugged on Cas’ hand, pulling him in the direction of Sam’s girlfriend. When she spotted them, her eyes went immediately to their hands. Her face spread into a smile, almost like she was expecting them.

“Hi guys!” she exclaimed. “Wow, look at you!”

“Dean and I are dating,” Cas said, cutting right to the chase.

“Oh my god, really?” The surprise in her voice sounded forced. “No way, I never would’ve guessed it!”

Dean sighed. “Sam told you already, didn’t he?”

“I’m sorry,” she groaned. “He told me to act surprised when I saw you, but you know I’m really bad at lying.”

Dropping Cas’ hand, Dean threw his arms up in the air. “Why does everyone think we’re already dating?”

“Well you are very close,” Jess suggested. “And for what it’s worth, I think you would make a very good couple.”

Dean shot her a look, before putting his hand on Cas’ back to steer him away. “Come on, Cas, I think we’ve pranked enough people for one day.”

Back in their room, Dean collapsed onto his bed with a long groan, staring up at the ceiling. “So that plan failed.”

“I don’t know.” Dean heard Cas sit down on the bed beside him. “Isn’t the point of an April fool’s prank to make people believe something that isn’t true?”

“Yeah, but they’re supposed to be surprised, not act like they were waiting for it to happen!”

Cas huffed a laugh. “You really wanted to get Gabriel, didn’t you?”

Dean grinned despite himself. “I really did.” He sat up and crossed his legs on his bed. “I’m sorry, Cas. I wouldn’t have suggested it if I’d know it was gonna be that embarrassing.”

“I didn’t mind,” Cas shrugged.

“What I don’t get is why everything assumed we were already dating.”

Cas suddenly seemed very interested in picking at his fingernails. “Yes, strange.”

“I mean, obviously we’re best friends, but we would never date for real, right?”

“Right,” Cas said quickly. Then he paused, looked up at Dean and frowned. “Right?”

For a second, Dean’s mind when blank, distracted by looking into Cas’ insanely blue eyes. Then he blinked and pushed himself up from the bed, pacing in tight circles. “Well, you know, we’re friends, and that would just be weird. And we’re roommates. There would be a million things that could go wrong. It would never work out, right?”

Cas shrugged, watching Dean carefully. “We’ve been living together for almost three years and we get along. Why is it so crazy for people to assume that something more than friendship formed between us?”

“Because it’s _weird_ , man!”

“Is it?”

Dean stopped pacing, seeing Cas’ expression, which looked almost hurt. “Come on, Cas, of course I don’t mean it like that. I just mean…”

“What, Dean? What’s so strange about you and I being a couple?”

“It’s just…” Dean struggled for words. Finally, he threw his hands up, giving in. “Nothing! Nothing is strange about it, okay? And that’s what makes it so goddamn terrifying!”

Cas was staring at him, speechless. Dean looked down at his feet, but when he looked up, Cas was still staring.

“Stop looking at me like that, Cas. Say something.”

“You meant that?” Cas whispered.

“Of course I did.” Dean shrugged self-consciously. “I can’t say I haven’t thought about it, okay? But I don’t want to lose you and whatever this is.” He gestured vaguely between them.

Instead of speaking, Cas stood up, grabbed the collar of his shirt, and kissed him. Taken aback, Dean took a moment to respond, but when he did his arms found their way around Cas and pulled him closer. Then a moment later, Dean broke away with a sharp breath.

“This isn’t some April fool’s prank, is it?” he demanded.

“Never in a million years, Dean Winchester,” Cas breathed. He moved to kiss Dean again, then paused. “Oh, can you promise me one thing, though?”

“What is it?” Dean couldn’t think straight with the taste of Cas’ mouth still on his lips.

Cas’ smile was full and gummy. “Let’s not tell anyone about this until tomorrow, okay?”

Dean knocked Cas’ forehead with his own. “Perfect.” Grinning, he leaned in to kiss Cas again.


End file.
